The exhibition uses the artist’s recent series of DOTCOM works blacktransarchive.com, blacktransair.com and blacktranssea.com as a starting point for furthering the archiving of Black Trans experience via interactivity and storytelling. The exhibition encompasses a new body of work that positions gaming at the forefront of ideas surrounding action, inaction, relation and archiving experience.
SHE KEEPS ME DAMN ALIVE presents visitors with an immersive point-and-shoot style arcade game that asks them to question how their choices and actions (or inactions) affect others directly. The exhibition positions the player at the heart of a situation demanding a reflection, an action and ultimately a stance to protect the lives of Black Trans people.
By taking part in the game the player also participates in forwarding the ideologies of the Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matters movements that took precedence worldwide during the pandemic. The movements speak of solidarity, honouring lives lost, and creating spaces where it is “easier for us to breathe”. These are recurring themes throughout the artist’s work and this show presents the power of holding space for memory and legacy.
This exhibition is my way of archiving. I am trying to build upon something real and expand it so that it can never be forgotten. I see archiving as a way of storing a person in the present so that future generations have something to look back on. Traditional archives have forgotten black trans existence so we need to build our own techniques to store bodies like ours. These have to come from us and be done by us.
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
On entering the gallery, visitors are confronted with a how-to-play guide that asks “Can you protect Black Trans people with a gun?” and requests them not to “SHOOT BLACK TRANS PEOPLE”. This call to action forms the narrative of the game and is part of a larger framework to promote accountability surrounding the black trans community and beyond. It also suggests an alternative history of what arcade games could have been: an anti-violent gun game that questions the use of guns to prevent harm.
Each player experiences a unique set of obstacles in their quest to protect the main protagonist on three separate levels; water, city and dungeon. The game forces each player to take ownership of their situation, whether they choose to play as a protector or destroyer, and whether they choose to centre themselves or another as the central player.
As SHE KEEPS ME DAMN ALIVE asks:
“Do you think you have the power to protect others?”
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley SHE KEEPS ME DAMN ALIVE Opening with live performance: 6-9 pm, Thursday 18th November 2021 Exhibition runs until Saturday 19th February 2022 arebyte.com
The show is accompanied by a booklet featuring a specially commissioned essay by artist, writer and curator Tamar Clarke Brown and poetry by black feminist, poet and performance artist, Chloe Filani. Also featured is an interview with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley that explores the methodologies behind the artist’s processes. An event series of collaborative programming will run alongside the show and features Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley in conversation with a series of invited guests. During their conversations, the artist and guests play their favourite games as a way to centre the discussions. Topics will include contemporary and queer gaming, interaction innovations, game criticism and theory, and the history of gaming. View the events programme here.
About the artist
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist working predominantly in animation, sound, performance and Video Games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record “History of Trans people both living and past”, their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future. Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences. Danielle’s work has been shown in Science Gallery, MU,
Barbican, Tate, Les Urbains as well as being part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery.
daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com
